WASHINGTON _ The death of George Floyd and subsequent vitriolic nationwide demonstrations against police violence have added yet another crisis to a presidential campaign already gripped by a public health emergency and economic calamity, thrusting the race into unprecedented terrain as Donald Trump and Joe Biden seek to show they can lead the country during a perilous moment in its history.
Even against the standard of recent presidential elections, some of which have been run against the backdrop of terrorist attacks and financial catastrophe, the 2020 race is beset with historic challenges few White House candidates have been forced to deal with, say veterans of past presidential campaigns.
"This is up there with World War II and the Civil War in terms of the extent of the crisis and how deeply it is affecting the nation and the world," said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Democrat John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, a race run in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"All of this history usually seems so big that it can only be part of the past," added Devine, who also worked on Bernie Sanders' 2016 bid. "But we find ourselves in the midst of it now."
Which candidate the influx of crises helps or hurts remains unclear five months out from Election Day: Even at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump's approval numbers barely budged. National polls released in recent weeks have shown Biden leading the president by a firm but relatively narrow margin, even if his advantage remains murkier in key swing states such as Wisconsin, Florida and Arizona.
But problems consuming the country could transform both candidates in voters' eyes, seasoned strategists said, in ways that are still difficult to predict.
"What was alarmist and bellicose war-mongering about Winston Churchill became desperately needed," said Stuart Stevens, the former chief strategist for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney's presidential campaign who is now advising a group working against Trump. "What was radical about (Margaret) Thatcher, the idea that we'd privatize these government-held industries, became a positive for her."
The 2020 election appeared headed for different circumstances when the year began, a time when the economy was growing and the coronavirus still hadn't reached the country. At that point, the election was shaping up as a referendum on Trump's conduct in office, especially after his impeachment in December by the House of Representatives on allegations he tried to extort the leader of a foreign country into supplying damaging information about Biden.
The election might still largely hinge on the public's views about Trump, but those perceptions now will be filtered through his response to the pandemic and the resulting economic catastrophe that has some analysts worried about a depression not seen since the 1930s.
And now they'll also be viewed through his attempts to respond to the protests over Floyd's death and the looting that occurred in many cities. On Monday, Trump sought primarily to speak out against the protest-related violence he says he saw across the country, saying he was considering using the military to quell the problems and declaring himself a "law and order president."
"These are not acts of peaceful protest," Trump said during a speech from the White House Rose Garden. "These are acts of domestic terror. The destruction of innocent life and the spilling of innocent blood is offense to humanity and a crime against God. America needs creation, not destruction. Cooperation, not contempt, security, not anarchy. Healing the hatred, justice, not chaos."
But Trump received criticism from even some Republican senators on Tuesday, some of whom said his decision to clear out peaceful protesters from in front of the White House was wrong. Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting Biden, also released a new ad on Tuesday criticizing the president's handling of the protests that it says will run in the presidential battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Concerns over police violence and racial inequality are likely to test both Trump and Biden in ways different than the pandemic. While the viral outbreak is a relatively novel problem, concerns over criminal justice are not _ making old concerns about both nominees' history on the issue newly relevant.
In Biden's case, its reemergence as a top issue could relitigate his role in crafting the 1994 crime bill, legislation many African American leaders say unjustly led to the imprisonment of too many members of the black community.
"Biden's self-imagined reinvention as a racial healer is laughable and requires memory-holing decades of racially inflammatory rhetoric," Trump's reelection campaign said in an email to reporters, later calling him the "architect of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs."
In a speech Tuesday _ one of the few public appearances he's made amid the COVID-19 pandemic _ Biden portrayed black Americans' concerns about the police as a problem that has existed before Trump's time in office and will continue to after he's gone. But Biden said the president has worsened the conditions for his own political benefit.
"I ask every American to look at where we are now, and think anew: Is this who we are?" Biden said, speaking from Philadelphia in what was a rare public appearance since the pandemic began. "Is this who we want to be? Is this what we pass on to our kids' and grandkids' lives? Fear and finger-pointing rather than hope and the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety? Self-absorption and selfishness?"
